Good things come to those that wait: what parenting and brand building have in common

The symmetries don’t end there.  

My son has all the while been growing from a helpless newborn – aided along the way by his parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers and friends - into a boy who is now (sometimes rather stridently) taking his first independent steps out into the world and beginning to discover, shape and be shaped by the world around him. And as a parent, my job is to increasingly stand back, to let him gain ever more independence and to let him become who he is.

The Guinness Open Gate is now a massive 50,000ft brand home smack in the middle of London. Spread across four buildings, it encompasses a brewery, tasting rooms, event space(s), two stores, two restaurants and an outdoor courtyard bar.  

But it also began as a helpless, newborn, half-baked idea shared by a few people at a workshop in Dublin back in 2019 - evolving through a pitch process, a few Covid shaped twists, countless decision gates, approvals, consultations, evolutions and a heaping dose of hard work across a huge number of clients and partners into the beautiful space and giant team that is now being launched out into the world. 

It too is taking its first steps – and it will no doubt continue to be shaped by visitors and the staff working there, day in and day out. And what excites me most is that it now really belongs to them.

Concepts, designs and plans initially held by a few people around a table in Dublin will now become unique experiences for thousands, with different meanings, impacts and importances for each one. Some will work, some will evolve, some will grow.

In this industry, sometimes we work on strategies and ideas that only live in the boardroom or as a presentation deck – but what I like best is when they escape.  

This project ‘escaped’ the workshop ideas wall and made it out into the world via a long and collaborative road. Our work evolved over three rough phases. The first step was to build out a proper creative concept and a corresponding business case that converted that initial workshop flicker of a thought into something concrete and compelling enough to get organizational buy-in at both the brand and commercial level.  

Next, the job was to take that vision and map it on to a suitable site in Central London. When we first discovered the site, it was a delivery yard, and random collection of buildings. There was a huge job to rationalize how to knit together the spaces into a cohesive whole – what goes where and why? But what was really exciting about this project, was that it wasn’t just us imposing a vision on to the buildings, but also discovering the stories and heritage lying beneath the surface. The main building was one of the original London porter breweries dating back to the 1700s, and we were honoured to help breathe brewing life back into it.   particularly memorable evening was spent with a beer historian (nobody told me that was a thing at career day at school!) drinking historical recipes from the brewery. With the depth and richness of Guinness history and that of the buildings, it enabled us to weave together these stories into something unique, authentic and I think additive to the neighbourhood.

And then the final phase was the messy, exacting, but enlivening process of design and creation. A throughline for us were some amazing clients heroically committed to making it happen, who deserve all the praise and a bevy of partners, experts and agencies who also put their mark on the space and held the collective line on making the concept what it is.

It is that process of taking an idea from nothing to something, taking on all the strain, collaboration, imperfection and complexity of that process that matters. It is the doing, the making it real that I feel so privileged and lucky to be a part of across giant, hard projects such as this one.    To borrow from the motto of Tottenham FC, to dare is to do - not just to think, to design, or to conceptualize, but to do. 

And once it is made and done, in my world of brand homes and experiences, you let it loose. This isn’t an ad you can just press print or play on, frozen in time to be aired and re-aired. A Brand Experience is alive, happening afresh every day for every new visitor, embodied each day by staff, each tour group has a different vibe, each day a slightly different character. 

And bringing it back to where I started, as I sit back and watch my son begin to make his first forays out into the world, I must remind myself of the same… to stand back, not hold things too tightly, cherish the journey, and remember that the world is now his, not mine. 

Patrick Hammond is co-founder & US Lead, Hot Pickle.

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